Dead Mech (50 page)

“And you just volunteered to die first,”
Harlow stated.

“If there’s death today, it’ll be yours,”
the Skinner snarled back.

“What about you?” Harlow asked the other
guard. “You feel like being eaten alive?”

“I trust the council,” the Skinner
responded.

“Idiot.”

***

“They’re all dead!” a voice yelled. “Seal
the entrance! They’re right behind-” But the Skinner never finished
as his throat was ripped out.

The guards’ hands fell away from Harlow’s
arms and she immediately planted her elbows into both Skinners’
throats. They dropped to their knees and Harlow slammed their heads
together, rendering them unconscious. She grabbed her long blades
from one of the guards, but didn’t see her sidearm. “Shit,” she
muttered.

Strapping her blades to her back, she turned
towards the main cave. Zombies poured into the cavern, falling on
anyone unlucky enough to be in their way.

***

Screams of agony, screams of terror, pleas
for help, pleas for mercy, all echoed within the cavern, but the
sounds fell on dead ears.

Harlow scanned the wall of the cavern,
finding what she hoped was the tunnel she had been brought through.
She dashed for the tunnel, but stopped only feet away as deaders
burst from the entrance. Her blades were in her hands without
thinking and she went to work.

Hours, days, months, years of training
kicked in and Harlow’s blades lashed out, perfect extensions of her
body. She was a deadly blur of synchronized strength and
agility.

***

Harlow fought alone.

Claws reached for her, but the hands fell,
separated from rotting wrists. Teeth gnashed, searching for her
skin, but the heads fell, severed from their shoulders.

Harlow was a graceful, beautiful machine of
death. A goddess set upon the earth to do one thing: kick deader
ass.

She thrust a blade through a zombie child,
yanking up and out, splitting the torso up the middle. Kicking out,
she knocked the true corpse to the ground. Seeing another zombie
lunge, Harlow knelt quickly, raising both blades above her head,
dicing the deader like a cook would a carrot.

***

Harlow rolled away, flicking the gore from
her blades. She looked down at her uniform and the deader blood on
it. The thin cloth, while tough against daily wear and tear, was
not going to last against zombie claws.

Feet away, a deader gorged itself on the
blood gushing from a Skinner’s throat, apparently the weak part of
their attire. Harlow strode with purpose to the deader, dispatching
attackers as they came at her.

She kicked in the deader’s head and pulled
the Skinner corpse into a nearby hollow. With a wary eye, Harlow
stripped the body of its hide.

***

Harlow managed to get her legs in the hide
before she had to dispatch four zombies. She got her left arm in,
dispatched three more zombies, then her right arm and again three
more zombies were dispatched. By the time she had the hide secured
upon her frame she was nearly concealed behind a stack of deader
corpses.

Pulling on the skin hood and gloves, Harlow
reached down and scooped a handful of the liquids leaking from the
deaders and smeared them onto the Skinner armor. Hoping the
camouflage would work, Harlow vaulted the pile, diving headlong
into Hell itself.

***

Harlow ignored the Skinners she passed,
leaving them to suffer the consequences of their selfish choices.
Many of the Skinners had been lazy in their assumption of security,
so had not donned their skins. Harlow kept her eyes averted as
flesh and skin were ripped from screaming victims.

She slashed and killed as needed, but her
progress was barley impeded by the deaders as they had so many
other targets to choose from to satisfy their bloodlust and hunger.
Some zombies that came close became confused by her presence,
sensing the life in her. Those that focused too long fell.

***

“Please don’t kill me!” a man cried, eyeing
the body of a Skinner Harlow had just killed. “I can get us out of
here!”

Deaders spun at the sound of the human voice
and charged. Harlow stepped in front of the man, her blades a whirl
of gore smeared steel. “Shut the fuck up and show me! NOW!”

He pointed to a small opening two levels up,
close to the ceiling of the cavern. Harlow surveyed the routes,
chose one and moved.

“Hey! Wait!” the man called.

Harlow decapitated three zombies before
turning on the man. “Shut the fuck up!”

***

Burying her blades in the skulls of two
zombies, one on her right, the other on her left, Harlow let go of
her weapons and focused on the deader coming straight for her, arms
reaching, clawing at her.

She grabbed the outstretched limbs and
yanked, pulling them from their sockets. The look on the zombie’s
face was nearly comical, but was gone in a flash as Harlow
bludgeoned the deader with its own severed arms.

All happened in a blink and Harlow had
dropped the arms and pulled her blades free of the zombie skulls
before the deaders could fall.

***

The man screamed, calling out, but Harlow
didn’t bother turning, all of her attention focused on escape. She
heard the cries, but compartmentalized them, tucked them away in
her psyche. She owed no one.

The attacks grew more frequent and she was
positive the deaders were fully aware she wasn’t one of them, her
rouse beginning to fail.

Mere yards away, Harlow could not contain
herself any longer and gave into the blinding berserker rage that
had always been her core, that had always been her driving
force.

Her mind went red and rationality stepped
back.

Death incarnate stepped forward.

***

Harlow punched through the wasteland earth
with her left arm, her right useless as she had to dislocate her
shoulder in order to squeeze through the shaft not meant for human
passage.

She kicked her legs and forced her upper
half out of the ground. With her right arm pinned underneath her
she positioned her body and rolled, popping the shoulder back into
place.

She got to her knees and her lips peeled
back in a vicious grin. Yards away stood the mech transport.

Now she would only need to annihilate the
hundred or so zombies between her and it.

***

“I am Death! I am Death! I am Death!” she
repeated over and over, her mantra of destruction, a chorus from
Hell.

What humanity Harlow had left fell away in a
baptism of red, black and grey gore. The only difference between
her and the zombie horde that collapsed about her was her beating
heart. A heart that slowed to a steady relaxing beat, as if she was
merely taking an afternoon stroll.

The words continued flowing from her lips in
a steady, unending chant. “I am Death! I am Death! I am Death! I AM
DEATH! I AM DEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAATH!”

***

Like waking from a trance, Harlow found
herself atop a heap of deader bodies, covered from head to toe in
undead fluids. Inches from her was the transport’s ramp and she
dreamily reached out and keyed in the lock code. The second the
ramp began to descend she grabbed a hold of the edge, swung her
body up and over and slid down into the transport. She immediately
stopped the ramp’s descent, brining it back into locked
position.

Tossing her soiled blades aside, she sat
down at the controls as her chest tightened and she fought the
encroaching adrenal crash.

June put her finger to her lips as the door
slid open and Themopolous stepped into the train compartment.

“How’s he doing?” Themopolous whispered.

“He’s been asleep for an hour now,” June
responded. “How are Bisby and Jethro?”

“Bisby’s stable and I’ve already prepped the
arm for prosthetics. Jethro isn’t doing as well,” the Doctor
sighed.

“Will he make it?”

“Physically, yes, we can keep his body alive
indefinitely. His mind, though, probably has 24 hours.” Themopolous
motioned towards a chair. “But, let’s move on to you. Have a seat
here and let’s get a better look at your injuries.”

***

“The first wave is here, sir,” Specialist
Nguyen announced.

“How many?” Lieutenant Murphy asked.

“87,000 on the ground and 14 transports,”
Nguyen responded.

The Lieutenant looked at her communications
Specialist. “Are you fucking shitting me?”

“No, sir, those numbers are shit free,”
Nguyen said.

“Smart ass,” Sol said, looking over Nguyen’s
shoulder at the tablet.

Murphy activated her com. “Dig in folks. I
want concealed defensive positions set up. Who has the
charges?”

“I do, sir,” Austin replied.

“Good. Get over here. We’re going to need to
plot out some special placement for those.”

“You got it, Lieutenant,” Austin said.

***

June painfully pulled her shirt over her
head. Themopolous nodded at the wrapping and began to unwind the
cloth from her midsection.

“Looks like the Railer medics have done a
decent job,” Themopolous said. “But, I’d like to get a better… Oh,
sweet Jeezus, June!” The Doctor looked up into June’s eyes. The
pilot held her gaze, never flinching as Themopolous carefully
probed the deep purple bruises. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Do
you
?” June asked. “I can go into
grisly detail if you want.”

Themopolous winced at June’s tone. “The ribs
are definitely broken.”

“Yeah, I know.”

***

“Um, sir, Johnson is aware of our presence.
I don’t see how setting up any position is going to be a tactical
advantage,” Specialist Sol said.

Lieutenant Murphy turned to her
2
^nd
in command. “Would you rather we all just stand here
with our dicks in our hands?”

“No, sir, but I’d like to see you try,” Sol
smirked. Murphy narrowed her eyes and Sol cleared his throat. “I’m
just saying that maybe this isn’t our stand. Maybe we should just
let happen what’s going to happen and assess the situation after
the dust settles.”

Murphy narrowed her eyes further.

***

A light knocking on the compartment door
brought a welcome distraction from the room’s tension. The door
slid open and the Rookie peeked his head in. “Sorry to interrupt.
Bisby’s coming out of it and he’s not being very cooperative.”

“Okay, we’re done. I’ll be right there,”
Themopolous said, handing June her shirt. “Rest if you can.”

June didn’t respond, her eyes and attention
locked on the Rookie. “Who the fuck are you?”

The Rookie was taken aback and looked to
Themopolous and back to June. “Um, I’m the Rookie. Remember?”

“June? Are you alright? What’s wrong?”
Themopolous asked, alarmed.

***

“I’m going to explain this one time and one
time only,” Murphy said, her anger barely contained. “This is our
stand. This is our fight. And if it’s the last one, so be it.” She
looked at her unit, assessing each member carefully. “If we run and
Johnson wins this shit then we could be some of the only people
left alive in the whole fucking world.”

She grabbed up her AR-715 auto-carbine and
checked the chamber. “And it may not mean much to you gents, but I
really don’t want to have the only working uterus in the
wasteland.”

***

“You should rest,” Themopolous said, trying
to divert June’s attention from the Rookie.

“Who the fuck are you?” June asked again,
ignoring the Doctor.

“That’s the Rookie, June,” Themoplous
said.

June gave the Doctor a look of reproach and
stood, moving towards the door. “Fuck all that Rookie shit. Where
did you come from? You aren’t city/state, are you?”

The Rookie snorted. “Did one of the Railers
tell you? No, I’m not city/state. I was born in the waste. I’m,
was, a Boiler.”

June stumbled back and Themopolous reached
out to steady her.

“You look just like him,” June growled.

***

“You have less than a .003 percent chance of
surviving this day,” the Outsider’s voice, Johnson’s voice, boomed.
“Submit now.”

“Give up? And miss kicking your ass? I don’t
think so,” Mathew responded. “How about you open up instead and we
have a nice face to face.”

Johnson laughed, the sound turning into a
cackle then snarl. “This door will never open again, for
anyone.”

“You know I have to try to get in, right?”
Mathew asked. “I kinda have a situation on my hands and I really
think the solution is behind that twenty feet of iron and
steel.”

***

“Can you give us a minute?” the Rookie asked
Themopolous. “June and I need to talk.”

Themopolous looked to June and the woman
nodded. “Okay, I’ll be in with Bisby. I’ll come back later and
check on you again, June. Before we get to, well, wherever we’re
going.”

The Doctor left reluctantly and the Rookie
closed the door behind her.

“Who do I look like?” he asked.

“Does the name Olivia mean anything to you?”
June watched the Rookie closely. “Or The Boss?”

Anger flashed briefly across the Rookie’s
face.

June sighed and sat. “Yes, we do need to
talk.”

***

Harlow didn’t bother dodging the deaders in
her path, she just kept a straight heading, throttle at full while
she operated the transport’s weapons systems. Five of the UDC
transports turned about, ready to engage.

“Fuck me,” she muttered, knowing she didn’t
have the capabilities to fend off a full attack.

The screen to her right bleeped shrilly, but
Harlow ignored it, busy trying to devise a way out of her latest
impossible situation.

The screen bleeped again, louder then again
and again.

“What?!?” she shouted then seeing what was
on the screen, she smiled. “Well, hello there little guy.”